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The Answer Man: Tipping on Wine

By Frank Bruni February 1, 2008 11:00 amFebruary 1, 2008 11:00 am

(Evan Sung for The New York Times)

Prompted by a wine-related post on this blog earlier this week, a reader wrote in to raise another issue concerning the ordering of — and paying for — wine in restaurants. It’s an issue I occasionally hear discussed and debated among people I knew, so I thought I’d give it a whirl.

Here’s the reader’s e-mail:

“Your recent blog posting re: mistakenly ordered bottles of wine brought up a question a few friends and I had while recently dining at Daniel. Let’s say you do order a $2,000 bottle, or one even more expensive: $10,000. Are you expected to tip 20% of that bottle’s worth?

“I say yes, most likely, and a friend disagreed,” the reader’s e-mail continued. “What is the general consensus regarding this?

It’s an interesting question, and one I feel utterly unqualified to answer on my own, because I’ve never ordered a $2,000 bottle of wine, or for that matter a $1,000 bottle of wine, or for that matter even a $500 bottle of wine. None are within my personal budget, and I think my overlords at The Times would rightly balk at restaurant tabs inflated by wines of such expense.

Comma splices, bad moods, a messy desk, a dinged laptop: the powers that be will suffer through, and roll with, all of that.

But an $800 Burgundy at a review dinner? They wouldn’t be amused, and I wouldn’t dare.

So, to answer the reader’s question, I reached out to a small group of knowledgeable people: several serious wine consumers, several city sommeliers.

And after talking or e-mailing with them, I concluded that there is no one established, accepted, unequivocal etiquette for tipping on a check whose lofty amount is reflective primarily of one or two bottles of incredibly expensive wine.

In that sense the comments generated by this post should be useful: perhaps they’ll give each of us a sense of what other diners do — or would do. Perhaps from this variety of perspectives and diversity of opinions a middle road will emerge.

Then again, there’s a limited number of readers who face the quandary of how to tip on wine that’s, say, $300 and up a bottle. But let’s fantasize that we all do.

One of the wine-savvy people from whom I sought wisdom and guidance on this topic is the senior sommelier at a highly respected Manhattan restaurant with a superior wine list, including wines over the $1,000-a-bottle mark.

He told me that most of the diners there who order such wines tip around 20 percent on their checks, including the price of the wine.

But he said that that reality largely reflects those diners’ relationships with the restaurant. They’re regulars who come in all the time, and so they’ve established the kind of familiarity with the staff — and the staff has established the kind of familiarity with them — that entails a lot of personal attention, a lot of coddling. The tips they give are tied into the perpetuation of their special status in the restaurant, and aren’t necessarily reflective of a philosophy of tipping a full 20 percent even on $1,500 bottles of wine.

This same sommelier said that few servers and few restaurants would be surprised — or feel significantly cheated — by a tip of 10 to 15 percent on a significantly high check whose principal component is pricey wine.

He was referring, he said, to this kind of scenario: a $1,600 check built from just $600 of food and a $1,000 bottle of wine. If the table in question tipped $250 instead of $320, he said, the server and restaurant would instantly understand why, and wouldn’t feel that the amount was out of line.

I’d add this: in my opinion, a diner should factor into his or her considerations not simply the amount of the bill represented by wine but how many bottles of wine went into that amount.
If a $1,600 check is built from $600 of food and $1,000 of wine but the $1,000 comprises three bottles — each selected after consultation with servers, each presented to the table with the requisite ceremony, each decanted, each poured bit by bit into diners’ glasses — that’s a lot more work for the restaurant than one $1,000 bottle. And in that case I personally wouldn’t feel comfortable tipping differently than I would for a $1,600 check built from $1,200 of food and $400 of wine.

After talking with the aforementioned sommelier, I got an e-mail from a big spender I know well, someone who likes expensive wines and doesn’t hesitate to buy them. And he has more than a few friends like him.

He wrote: “I think the general practice for most of my friends is to drop the tip closer to the 15 percent range on the total bill when the wine is a huge component (greater than 60 percent) of the cost.” He used the word “drop” because it’s usually his habit to tip 20 percent or more for excellent service in a restaurant.

In my question to him about wine tipping, I’d floated the hypothetical scenario of an $800 bottle. In his answer he noted: “I rarely order something that costly, but on the occasions I do, it is generally at a restaurant I where I am a regular, often as part of a celebration, and the host or sommelier will buy me an after-dinner drink, desserts, etc., to thank me for ordering the wine. In these situations, I often keep the tip at 20 percent to offset their generosity.”

I also forwarded the reader’s e-mail to my colleague and friend Eric Asimov, the newspaper’s wine critic and the author of a blog, The Pour, that warrants faithful reading.

Eric responded: “I’m not sure what you’re ‘supposed’ to do. I haven’t read any advice from etiquette experts. But my feeling is: you tip on the bottom line, including the wine. Which I guess is another way of saying that if you can afford the $10,000 bottle of wine, then you can afford a tip commensurate with the restaurant’s level of expertise and the quality of its care.

Unless, of course, the service doesn’t meet what, at that level of spending, ought to be flawless standards. In which case you decide what you want to tip just as you do any other time. But I don’t think that 20 percent on a $10,000 bottle is any more absurd than on a $100 bottle. It’s just part of the experience.”

It takes no more effort to serve an entree that costs $38 than one that costs $28 or $18, yet we tip 20% on the $38; it’s just a plate of food, but the whole archaic practice of tipping is predicated on leaving an amount based on the cost of the meal (before tax, please!), not on the effort expended to get it to the table. So the same procedure should apply to wine, 20% of the price on the wine list, at least up to the point, as noted in the post, that the bottle is so expensive that a celebratory air surrounds its ordering, opening and consumption.

As I’ve said to people many times, if you are too cheap to tip 20% on whatever wine (or for that matter, food) you order, then you shouldn’t be ordering it or shouldn’t be dining out. If you have a certain amount of money (especially, say, $10,000) to spend on a bottle of wine, then don’t try to save money cutting out somebody’s tip, who almost certainly makes considerably less money than you do. If you have $1000 to spend on wine and no more, then buy an $800 bottle (I’ve heard there are quite a few good ones in that range…) and tip 20% nonetheless.

Let’s say there are two tables that order the exact dishes, have the same servers, and the total food costs $300. Table 1 orders a $100 bottle and Table 2 orders a $1000 bottle. Both tables get the same service: assistance with selection, presentation, decanting, etc. Is an extra $200 tip at Table 2 on the $1000 bottle justified, whereas the same service for Table 1 tips $20 on the bottle? I’m not so sure tipping on the bottom line as Eric suggests makes sense as the cost of the wine increases. It’s great for the servers, but is it a little unfair for the diner, no? I understand that if you can afford a $1000 bottle you probably shouldn’t complain about having to tip $200 on that bottle, but this strikes me as a bit of a windfall. The problem is where do you draw the line? $300 bottle, $500, $1000 . . .

I tend to agree with Mr. Asimov — if you can afford the $10,000 (or even $1,000) bottle of wine, you can probably afford to tip to your normal standards. If you know you can only afford to spend $1,000, then pick an $800 bottle and budget for the $160 tip.

I agree with Mr. Koeppel’s comment about tipping being archaic, but it is the norm that we all have to live with.

Here is an idea, order the wine on a separate check, and food on another, most restaurants will accommodate that especially if your only planning on buying one expensive bottle, and tip any where from 10 -15% on the wine. But if your ordering multiple bottles that requires different glassware, decanting of bottles, involvement of sommelier/management, yeah tip accordinly!!!!! 20%

I agree completely with Asimov. When I order a $100 tasting menu at a restaurant, I’m consciously making a $120 commitment (leaving tax, another point of tipping contention, out of it.) I wouldn’t order a $100 meal (an extravagant dinner by my standards, and the standards of most) if I couldn’t afford a $120 meal and I wouldn’t order a $10,000 bottle of wine if I couldn’t afford a $12,000 bottle of wine.

I think that’s some highly dubious reasoning from Eric Asimov. I fully recognize that the ingredients that go into a dish of food, no matter how specialized they are, cost a lot less than what is being charged for them. However, this does not include the skill, finesse and time that a good chef puts into creating the final product.

Wines, however, usually have an absurd markup in restaurants, and you could purchase the same bottle down the street in a wine shop for less than half of what the restaurant charges. And you’d get the same wine, which is different from buying the food ingredients and trying to cook it yourself.

I’m sure this is a moot point for those who can afford to drop ten grand on a bottle of wine. But for us mere mortals, if I spend $300 on food for 2 and then $100 on a bottle of wine (for a special occasion), I think it’d be a bit much to expect an $80 tip (and I’m someone who generally tips 20% by default).

A few friends and I went to a medium-priced establishment where most wines cost around $25-$40. It was a special occasion so we shelled out for three bottles of their most expensive wine that costs $80. The wine service was very basic:
– occasionally poured but not always and one time while pouring the waitress dribbled on to my hand and table
– the temperature is not quite right due to not ideal storage conditions
– there is no sommelier
– waitstaff is not particularly knowledgeable about the wine and did not recommended our selection
Essentially, there was no extra effort/cost that went in to serving this wine

In this case, the wine made up 70% of the bill’s total. We tipped 12% because the service was just okay and there were a couple problems with orders. Upon leaving, the manager followed us out of the restaurant and asked if there was a problem with the service and began scolding us for being cheap. We were shocked as our dinner bill had far exceeded their average- had we ordered average cost wines the tip would have been very generous. Were we wrong?

I’m in complete agreement with Fredric, above #1. Tip 20% on food and wine together as one total. Thank you. I am a sommelier and a diner, on different nights. I appreciate both sides, and love what I do, on different nights.

You wouldn’t short the wait staff on a meal that was $1000 because you thought it would take the same level of service to bring out a $50 meal. If you can afford to order a $1000 (or more) bottle of wine, you can afford to tip on the actual price.

The marginal effort of providing a $10,000 vs., say, a $1,000 bottle of wine really does not seem to justify a 10x increase in gratuity. I think it’s obvious that restaurant tipping should be progressive. For example: 20% on the first $200; %15 on the next $300; %10 on the next $500; and so on.

First, on a technical point, TIPS (To Insure Proper Service) are given at the beginning of a meal. What we give is a gratuity.
I agree with the Mr. Koeppel. I have been a server for over a decade and this system only serves to help small restaurants keep operating by diverting part of the staffing cost to the guest. I can find no other reason, even though I have gained perticular skills through experience, why I, as a server, should make, sometimes three to four times, more money than a line chef who has had years of schooling in his craft.
But, back to the subject at hand. How do you decide the price point at which you can start tipping less than 20%? Everyone has different budgets and therefore different points of view on what constitutes an expensive bottle. Plus, most “expensive” wines do mendate more on the part of the server. First,the glassware is more expensive and require more time polishing and maintaining. Second, a wine of caliber must be poured slower and more often. For example, if a guest is drinking a quaffing, $30.00 wine, I would pour on top of a glass that has some wine in it, but, if a guest is drinking a special bottle, I would wait for the guest to finish his/her glass and then pour more so he/she can experience the development of each glass.
Plus, once you’ve seen someone get seven stitches and suffer vascular damage because they stabbed themselves with five inch broken stem of a Riedel Sommelier Series, you would think that they deserve that 20%.

I don’t drink much wine, but who goes out to eat not knowing they must leave a tip? Even my teenagers know it’s 20% and they calculate it into their meal. So I agree that if one is going to spend 800 or 1200 on a bottle of wine, then one can surely expect that she/he has to tip accordingly. Let’s face it, whoever has the gelt to even look at wines with those prices surely has the intelligence to know they are going to have to leave a tip.

I’d like to thank Mr. Asimov for saying it perfectly. I’m always amazed at the vitriol spewed at servers and the indignant self-righteous tales of tipping as little as possible. I would personally be embarrassed to buy an expensive bottle of wine and then tip less on account of it. What kind of person does that? (Tom’s story is different because he didn’t feel the service had been up to snuff).

It doesn’t matter that you can buy the wine at a store and drink it at home – think about the cost of hiring a person (a clean person with proper hygiene and most likely professional demeanor) to come to your house and wait around until it was time to refill your glass, and you’ll maybe start to get the idea. I’m not going to make the argument that pouring a pricey bottle of wine costs takes more talent than pouring a modestly priced one, but come on – the bottom line is if you’re shelling out for the wine, make some server’s night and tip commensurately. I don’t understand the stinginess that is often expressed towards servers and, in the interest of disclosure, I myself haven’t ever been one. I think people who begrudge tipping waitstaff would be better off staying at home.

Shouldn’t the cost of goods and services reflect the value provided to the customer? Tipping at a constant 20% has no basis in logic. It is a decent convention for everyday transactions, but, for me, it make no sense when applied to fine dining, especially with fine wine.

For example a bottle of wine may cost $100 wholesale and will retail for $130. A restaurant may sale that identical bottle for $260. A 20% tip on that bottle would be $52. If you are adding tip after tax, the tip would be maybe $55.

How does a business justify 50% markups? They’re not selling oil, after all.

With regard to wine mark-ups raised by Mr. Weber (post # 8), did you ever consider how much food might be marked up? From my experience working in restaurants, and as a writer about food and wine, the price of a dish is generally pegged at 3x food cost – the same mark-up most restaurants apply to wine. Of course, certain dishes, such as pasta, mark-ups are generally far, far higher. And, so too are mark-us for less expensive wines. Yes, there is generally more labor involved in putting a plate of food out than serving a bottle of wine, but there is also a lot more effort to serving a bottle of wine in a restaurant than simply pulling the same wine off the shelf of your local wine shop.

Something that no one has brought up is that servers are expected to pay taxes based on their sales. The IRS expects servers to take home, after tipping out their support staff, 10% of their sales. If they aren’t tipped appropriately, regardless of how expensive the bottle(s) are/is, they could end up paying taxes on “income” they didn’t recieve.

With respect to my #13, I obviously meant tips should be “regressive” no “progressive”: one should pay a smaller percentage on a larger bill. But this is an argument from economics. I have been moved by the appeals to populist resentiment in this thread: the fat cats who order the expensive wines can get stuck with the (economically irrational) inflated tip, for all I care.

The IRS expects waiters to pay taxes on 100% of their income, wages and tips. If during an audit the waiter does not have records of what he/she has paid out to support staff the waiter is responsible for taxes on 100% of the tip. An average tip percentage is set by the credit card receipts and applied to the total sales of the waiter.

At some restaurants the tip out to support staff is based on sales and at others it is based on tips received. The IRS takes no position on either system.

The IRS and The Department of Labor does take a position that forcing the waiter to pay out more than 15% of his tips to support staff is unreasonable and can be grounds for legal action. So if your example waiter is only taking home 1/2 of that 20% tip the restaurant could face legal action.

re: # 17
If i were to drink Ripple and pay $ 2.00a bottle i wouldn’t read a review by Eric Asimov or Mr Bruni in this ongoing wonderfull posts, or as you put it;
they are not selling oil!by the way check out Exxon/Mobil 3rd quarter 2007 net earnings $ 12 BILLION approx. How do you equate?
Fine restaurant, great food & Wine, great Service
20% across ..

I have to agree with Eric Asimov on this. Regardless of everyone’s complaints about the markup, fine restaurants carry large inventories of wine. That costs money, as does proper storage facilities, proper glassware, training of the staff, etc.

It is only reasonable to tip on the bottom line. It may seem like an extravagant amount of money to tip, but I can only imagine how annoyed I would be if I received $20 service for a $10,000 bottle.